Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

April…Jesus, no. Shelly lay on the bed stretching, staring through the fake window at the beach mural on the basement wall as if she had never noticed it before. “Where is this beach, anyway?” she asked. “I mean, I know you said it was in Hawaii, but where?”

“Maui.”

“Oh, yes. Maui,” Shelly said, trying to sound as if she spent her vacations at Kapalua Bay when the truth was that she generally summered in Moab, Utah, cleaning rooms in the cheap motel owned by a lecherous uncle who had popped her cherry when she was thirteen. “And what am I doing here?”

“Just a solo tonight. You know the routine. First you look at yourself in the mirror, then you take off the sweater and play with your nipples, and then you open the dresser drawer and take out the-”

Her laughter cut him off. “Geez, you haven’t been listening to me at all.”

“Sure I was.”

She raised her eyebrows so wickedly that he couldn’t help but feel guilty. “You’re a liar, Marvis. But I’ll allow you that simple failing, because you’re my most wonderful director.”

Shutterbug wondered what movie she had stolen that line from. He certainly didn’t have a snappy comeback, so he tried to get things back on track. “Okay, now if you just step over to the mirror.”

“No. Not until you explain my motivation.”

“What?”

“That’s the method. Brando, Clift, Monroe. Jesus! I thought you knew something about the movies!”

Shutterbug sighed. “C’mon, Shelly. This is just a little silly.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She pouted.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I was a little too harsh.”

“Marvis…I can’t make it real for you unless you make it real for me.”

He smiled, but he was thinking that it was time to find a new girl.

“Make it real for me, Marvis,” she said.

“Okay.” He hesitated. “You’re a young girl…very innocent. You’re in Hawaii. You see a guy you like and you can’t stop thinking about him. So you go back to your hotel room, and your parents aren’t around, and you-”

“Flick my clit.” She shook her head. “That’s all this is to you, isn’t it? Little Shelly flicking her clit. And then you’ll want me to go at it with that kinky stuff you keep in the drawer.” She turned away. “I thought you could do better than that, Marvis.”

“Okay,” he said, surprised to find that the conversation was actually making him feel inadequate. “Give me a second chance, Shelly. Maybe we can work on this together. Maybe we can create a character.”

“That would be great!” Shelly’s face lit up, but the light faded fairly quickly. “Now, who am I?”

“Like I said, you’re a girl on vacation-”

“And?”

“And you see this guy-”

“C’mon, Marvis. If I’m on vacation, and if I’m in Hawaii, what am I doing wearing a cheerleading sweater?”

Marvis had to admit that it was a good question. “Okay…you’re not on vacation. You’re in Hawaii for the national cheerleader championships.”

“I am? That’s great!”

“Yes it is. And even better than that, your cheerleading squad just won the championship!”

Shelly shook her pompoms.

“But there’s bad news, too.” Shutterbug wrinkled his brow. “When you get back to your room, you get a phone call. It’s your boyfriend’s mother. You find out that he was just killed in a drag race.”

“Ohmygod!”

“And you’re very sad. But you miss him. So you get in bed and-”

“And I think about how much I miss him while I flick my clit!”

“Sure!”

“And that isn’t as good as he was, so then I have to do the other stuff, because I miss him really bad!”

Shutterbug smiled expansively, thinking bimbo sapiens, right here before my lens, live and in living color.

“This is great,” Shelly said. “This is wonderful!”

“Okay, let’s get to it.”

Shelly looked a little worried. “Before we get started, can I go upstairs for a minute? Just to be alone and think. Just for a minute. That way I can get into character.”

Shutterbug kept the smile on his face, but only by the greatest force of effort.

“Sure, Shelly, sure.”

More than a few minutes passed. Shutterbug waited like a bump on a log. His equipment was ready to roll, and he didn’t have anything else to fiddle with.

Amazing. Shelly Desmond the method actress. Getting into character seemed to take a lot longer than the trips to the bathroom that usually interrupted shooting, and sometimes those trips seemed equal in length to Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments.

But what could he do? Shelly would be pissed if he went upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door. And Shutterbug knew there was nothing worse than a pissed-off fifteen-year-old erotica diva. Especially one who had discovered the method.

He knew that, but right now he didn’t much care. He had taken enough shit for one day.

Enough was enough.

Shutterbug quietly mounted the stairs, a talent he had developed early in life because his father was a stickler for quiet. He passed the kitchen and entered the hallway. The bathroom was the first door on the left.

The door was open. The light was off.

Shutterbug stopped cold. He glanced over his shoulder at the front door and saw that Shelly’s backpack wasn’t there.

The little bitch had run out on him. But why? And without her pants? Wearing only a sweater? It didn’t make sense.

Twin terrors struck simultaneously. Shutterbug froze, remembering the warning on the phone, remembering Steve Austin’s warning.

And he had thought that he was in the clear. Just because a few hours had ticked off on the clock. Amazing. How could he be so-

A squealing whisper sounded further down the hallway. It was a sound that Shutterbug recognized.

The sound of the closet door in his bedroom sliding over a worn track.

Shutterbug was moving before he could think. There was only room enough for one word in his head, and that word was money.

He stepped into the bedroom. Shelly was there on the floor, zipping her backpack, just as he had expected. She tried a coy little smile, as if nothing was wrong, and then she saw his wild eyes and her face went slack.

His hands closed on April’s sweater and he jerked Shelly to her feet and she seemed so small to him.

He threw her onto the bed and watched her bounce.

“You’ve been stealing from me. Shelly.”

“No,” she said. “No! I just wanted some coke before we got started, but I was afraid to ask- “

“Okay.” He took hold of her jaw and pulled her face close to his. “I don’t see any powder on your nose, Shelly.” He laughed, pushed her back on the bed, straddled her and sloppily licked her nose. “Don’t taste anything, either.”

He was off of her in a flash. He snatched up her backpack and slammed it onto the bed with such force that her buck knife-a present from Joey-shattered a bottle of perfume.

“Don’t hurt me,” she said.

Tears spilled from her eyes. The zipper moaned as Shutterbug unzipped her backpack. He saw a flash of green. Six fifties were jammed inside along with her makeup and lipstick, each bill soaked with Liz Taylor’s signature perfume. “I’m surprised,” Shutterbug said. “And disappointed-Liz isn’t a method actress, Shell.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“At least you’re not greedy. Shell. Of course, if you’d been greedy, I guess I would have noticed. And I was beginning to worry about all those trips to the bathroom. I thought you had a little infection or something.”

She tried to smile, but it didn’t take. “It was my boyfriend. I know I talk too much…I told Joey about the money, and how you showed it to me when we did the coke. Well…he made me take it. He said he’d hurt me if I didn’t.”